Small group instruction didn't look fancy in my room today, but there sure was a ton of learning going on. We worked on the short e sound. We started out writing short e words on our white boards and transitioned into sentence writing. I gave them a short e word and they used the word in a sentence. In the pictures below, we were using the word bed in a sentence.

Next week, we will be reading "Gus Takes the Train" in our Journeys reader. I whipped up a sequencing activity for my students to do at one of our centers while I work with small groups. It is shown below. I will laminate and cut out the 4 sequence cards. Students will sequence them in the correct order and then write the sentences on their recording sheet. If you would like a copy of this activity, just click on the picture below.

Holy Cow! I can't seem to find any time to squeeze in a moment to blog. My hat is off to all you bloggers that can find the time to blog every week and I even follow a couple of bloggers that keep up with two blogs AND have their own young families! Ah-maz-ing!!!!! We are starting week three in my classroom. And let me say that I have a great group of kiddos!. I have some kids with BIG hearts this year. LOVE!I'm curious if there are any Texas bloggers out there that are having to follow the TEKS Resource System Year at a Glance? We are this year and it has been a little LOT crazy around here trying to get all our adopted classroom resources aligned and find resources to supplement with when our adopted series doesn't cover a particular TEK in a certain six weeks.For those of you who don't have a clue what I am talking about, it is a vertically aligned document (K-12) that is a map of the entire year's instructional plan and a pacing guide for units of study. It puts our TEKS (standards) in a particular order to be taught throughout the year. Here is a snapshot of the first two six weeks of math:

There is a point to this conversation. I want to share some things I have recently purchased on TpT that are saving my life right now.One of my favorites is Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math First Grade Units 1-9 Bundle. Her product has all the TEKS (and common core if use that) right on each activity. Her product is not aligned exactly with the YAG we are using, but it has been super easy to grab exactly what I need out of it to match up with what I am teaching.Since our school uses Go Math, I haven't used many of the whole group lessons, but I am eating up her small group lessons. They are fantastic. Here are a few pictures of us in action.

Another product I am loving is Miss Giraffe's Short Vowels. When I do literacy groups, I have one group working with me, one group at centers and one group at seat work. Her short vowel sheets are PERFECT for seat work and cover many ELA TEKS. Sorry I didn't get a picture of us doing this. :(

One of my go-to people on TpT for science and social studies is Robin at Class of Kinders. It is easy for me to go to her store and grab whatever activity I need to meet a TEK. We used her Mapping My Classroom Pop-Up Activity and here are a couple of my student's completed maps of our classroom.

You can grab a copy of any of the products I mentioned by clicking on the names of their products.